Externalize (Big Contest 2013 - 1 place)

[RenaSun]

Thanks everyone for the comments) I’m very pleased that you liked it

Was this mostly masking?

Yes, it was. The process was really terrible, approximately every scene was changed

[imp]

This was really nice! good job on the masks! seemed so real! loved it.

[pan_dbgt01]

A well deserved win. I really LOVE this XD

[l33tmeatwad]

While I can tell a lot of work went into it, when it comes to cross overs you need to do more work to make them look like they belong together. Raw masking with no attempt to really make the two sources look like they belong together crated an awkward feel throughout most of the video, perhaps you could work on color correction before working on another cross over. I would also suggest picking sources that at least look like they belong together, the character art differences were very jarring and gave the video a very disjointed feel. Also, watch your angles, parts like at 1:30 where the girl has her head titled as you aligned the other character with her at a very bad angle stand out as very poor design and you should either mask out the background or use a better angle for both characters. While all videos have their own flaws, cross over videos that have characters on screen at the same time tend to suffer more from sloppy editing and poor color correction as opposed to ones that do not attempt to put them on screen at the same time. With all that said, you do have an interested way of telling a story and that is a great skill to have when making videos. I look forward to future videos you put out.

[nihilant01]

Huge work, I admire such diligence, and I really like it too .

[RenaSun]

Raw masking with no attempt to really make the two sources look like they belong together

perhaps you could work on color correction

what is color correction for you? thick layer of looks, mojo and so on? I didn’t want to use them, I wanted to save the maximum of original colors, so using of curves, levels, masks, solids, OF helped me here a lot.

the character art differences were very jarring

first of all I wanted to use character, who is really older then girl and he should do paperworks, so Hattori from Bakuman was perfect for my idea. secondly, how do you think about this

this is original Chihayafuru character. is he suitable?

parts like at 1:30 where the girl has her head titled as you aligned the other character with her at a very bad angle

I don’t think so.

And thanks everyone again

[l33tmeatwad]

Raw masking with no attempt to really make the two sources look like they belong together

perhaps you could work on color correction

what is color correction for you? thick layer of looks, mojo and so on? I didn’t want to use them, I wanted to save the maximum of original colors, so using of curves, levels, masks, solids, OF helped me here a lot.

First off, it seems you don't really understand what color correction REALLY is. I know a lot of editors think color correction is skewing all the colors to one shade or something ridiculous like that, but what i mean by color correction is really selecting one of the sources and matching the color tones of that show. The overall color tone of the different sources were obvious and could have used some adjusting. It really shows with the different white level balance that the different shows have causing a variance in skin tones and the whites in the scene not matching well (making the foreign character(s) look out of place). When done properly, no one should be able to tell color correction was done at all, but when not done or done improperly it really stands out like a sore thumb.

the character art differences were very jarring

first of all I wanted to use character, who is really older then girl and he should do paperworks, so Hattori from Bakuman was perfect for my idea. secondly, how do you think about this
Quoted Image converted to link:
http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2 ... ishida.jpg
this is original Chihayafuru character. is he suitable?

When you show that picture it doesn't appear as if he belongs, but there overall art style of that character in the TV series does match that of the other characters. Keep in mind the art style of a character can vary based on the source (aka, the manga version may look slightly different than it's anime counterpart). With that said, the character you placed in has more of a sharp art style, while the other show tends to have more round, soft style characters, the overall art styles are just very different and don't work well together.

parts like at 1:30 where the girl has her head titled as you aligned the other character with her at a very bad angle

I don’t think so.

You don't think so? Re-evaluate the scene, the male character is standing vertical, but the female when viewed in relation to the ground is clearly being viewed from a camera angle above her head and to her left. These are things you need to pay attention to when adding foreign things to a scene as to not create an awkward sense of something not belonging to the viewers.

I know I can give some harsh reviews, but it's for your benefit, I would like to see those in the AMV community improve and get better so I try to be as honest as possible when giving feedback. Overall I can see a lot of potential here if you just take the steps necessary to fix flaws in future videos.

[SeNniN]

Awesome job, RenaSun! Congrats on the 1st place. :]
I didn't even realize that you used different sources when I first saw this, since I'm not familiar with any of the sources used here.

Also, watch your angles, parts like at 1:30 where the girl has her head titled as you aligned the other character with her at a very bad angle stand out as very poor design and you should either mask out the background or use a better angle for both characters.

hmm.. actually, it looks fine. I know what you mean there, but it seems more like she's slightly tilting her head over when she's talking to him.

[pan_dbgt01]

Glad people are still talking about this. Shows you how good it really is

[AimoAio]

Paper Arata coming to life was probably the best part of the AMV, it was just so beautifully done I got chills from watching it. That being said, I do wish the story/concept of the AMV was more focused on that aspect rather than a super realistic story of a girl drawing manga and winning a competition. Not saying the story was bad or anything, in fact it was excellently portrayed. Just for me, it wasn't...very interesting. Like it lacked....something emotional? Something that draws me in and thinking "wow, that's just incredible" and I don't mean in terms of editing skill because it's obvious enough from this AMV that you have plenty of that but a story where it makes me "feel" something. And I didn't really get that feeling except for when the paper character came to life. The angle at 3:18 also felt a tiny bit strange and where the others have mentioned Chihaya's head being slightly larger than proportion, though aside from that it was a pretty fantastic AMV. Great job! I especially LOVED the facial scenes from the anime where she was playing Karuta against the Queen (1:08, 2:16 to name a few) that you integrated in to the video to show the intensity of when she was drawing manga, that was so awesome!

Oh and congrats on 1st place, you deserve it.